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With the judicial system worldwide investigating finance companies for misleading disclosures, deception has become a topical issue. However, deception is an area that has historically not been favoured in academia. The paper aims to determine whether disclosure practices of failed companies show more characteristics of deception than those of viable companies. The research will involve a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including the use of content analysis and the software DICTION. An index of deception is constructed. The higher the deception score, the more deceptive the authors are deemed to be. This study tests this argument with respect to the prospectuses of a sample of failed and non-failed New Zealand finance companies.